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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index G > Sir Archibald Geikie Quotes

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Sir Archibald Geikie
(28 Dec 1835 - 10 Nov 1924)

Scottish geologist who studied the effects of glaciation in Scotland, became director of the new branch of the Geological Survey for Scotland and later was appointed as director-general of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom.


Science Quotes by Sir Archibald Geikie (9 quotes)

Apart from its healthful mental training as a branch of ordinary education, geology as an open-air pursuit affords an admirable training in habits of observation, furnishes a delightful relief from the cares and routine of everyday life, takes us into the open fields and the free fresh face of nature, leads us into all manner of sequestered nooks, whither hardly any other occupation or interest would be likely to send us, sets before us problems of the highest interest regarding the history of the ground beneath our feet, and thus gives a new charm to scenery which may be already replete with attractions.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
Outlines of Field-Geology (1900), 251-2.
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Geologists have not been slow to admit that they were in error in assuming that they had an eternity of past time for the evolution of the earth’s history. They have frankly acknowledged the validity of the physical arguments which go to place more or less definite limits to the antiquity of the earth. They were, on the whole, disposed to acquiesce in the allowance of 100 millions of years granted to them by Lord Kelvin, for the transaction of the whole of the long cycles of geological history. But the physicists have been insatiable and inexorable. As remorseless as Lear’s daughters, they have cut down their grant of years by successive slices, until some of them have brought the number to something less than ten millions. In vain have the geologists protested that there must somewhere be a flaw in a line of argument which tends to results so entirely at variance with the strong evidence for a higher antiquity, furnished not only by the geological record, but by the existing races of plants and animals. They have insisted that this evidence is not mere theory or imagination, but is drawn from a multitude of facts which become hopelessly unintelligible unless sufficient time is admitted for the evolution of geological history. They have not been able to disapprove the arguments of the physicists, but they have contended that the physicists have simply ignored the geological arguments as of no account in the discussion.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
'Twenty-five years of Geological Progress in Britain', Nature, 1895, 51, 369.
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Geology ... offers always some material for observation. ... [When] spring and summer come round, how easily may the hammer be buckled round the waist, and the student emerge from the dust of town into the joyous air of the country, for a few delightful hours among the rocks.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
In The Story of a Boulder: or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field Geologist (1858), viii.
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How different would geological literature be to-day if men had tried to think and write like Playfair!
— Sir Archibald Geikie
In The Founders of Geology (1905), 298. He was praising the logical arrangement and clarity of Playfair’s classic book, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802). Geikie added, “Of this great classic it is impossible to speak too highly … it may be read with as much profit and pleasure as when it first appeared.”
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If all history is only an amplification of biography, the history of science may be most instructively read in the life and work of the men by whom the realms of Nature have been successively won.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
The Founders of Geology (1905), 4.
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Looking back across the long cycles of change through which the land has been shaped into its present form, let us realise that these geographical revolutions are not events wholly of the dim past, but that they are still in progress. So slow and measured has been their march, that even from the earliest times of human history they seem hardly to have advanced at all. But none the less are they surely and steadily transpiring around us. In the fall of rain and the flow of rivers, in the bubble of springs and the silence of frost, in the quiet creep of glaciers and the tumultuous rush of ocean waves, in the tremor of the earthquake and the outburst of the volcano, we may recognise the same play of terrestrial forces by which the framework of the continents has been step by step evolved.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
Lecture at the Evening Meeting, Royal Geographical Society (24 Mar 1879), 'Discussion on Geographical Evolution', in Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record (1879), New Monthly Series, 1, 443.
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The present is the key to the past.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
Textbook of Geology (1882), 3 .
Science quotes on:  |  Past (355)  |  Present (630)

This boulder seemed like a curious volume, regularly paged, with a few extracts from older works. Bacon tells us that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Of the last honour I think the boulder fully worthy.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
In The Story of a Boulder: or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field Geologist (1858), 4.
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When autumn returns with its long anticipated holidays, and preparations are made for a scamper in some distant locality, hammer and notebook will not occupy much room in the portmanteau, and will certainly be found most entertaining company.
— Sir Archibald Geikie
In The Story of a Boulder: or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field Geologist (1858), viii.
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See also:

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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